Love

"It's the fear that His love is no better than mine"

I've been an Andrew Peterson fan from the second I heard one of his songs off his first major album years ago. I just liked the way he crafted songs. The other day I was driving in the car listening to an album I've listened to 100's of times. All of a sudden the line I quoted above. Now I know that I've sung that line along with the recording tons of times but all of a sudden I was paying attention to it.

What kind of trouble would this world be in if God's love was no better than the love that this faulty youth pastor has? I am afraid to even think.

I don't love people like I should. I have this puny human brain. I get angry with people. I get frustrated with people. I don't understand the decision making of people. I'm impatient.

Ok Aaron, but those are people that everyone has a hard time with. But let's be honest here. I'm not a perfect husband or father either. I get frustrated with my son because he needs something but he can't tell me what it is. I know this'll come as a shock to you, but sometimes my wife and I argue about things!

God's love is so good. He loves those people that frustrate me as much as he loves me. Not more.....but not less either. God doesn't see a scale. His desire is that EVERYONE would recognize their sin and repent and come back to Him.

On so many levels it's a good thing God is God and I am not.

Vigorous Peace

I heard a pastor on the radio the other day giving a benediction. He was praying the Peace of Christ on the listener, then he said this......"..but may that peace be a vigorous peace...."

That stuck in my head. I've been chewing on it awhile.

I've always loved the description of God as the Prince of Peace. My life is usually pretty busy. Hectic even. So for me God being the Prince of Peace is a great metaphor that I can wrap my head around. A Prince of Peace is a God that I can run to when my world is crazy and I can rest in the comfort that only He can provide me.

Vigorous Peace. That conjures up some other images though. Peace is calm. It is relaxing. How can it be vigorous?

What the pastor was illuding to was this....as Christians we find that true peace can only come through Christ. But once we really understand and experience that peace, you become excited and want to make sure everyone around you has that same peace.

Let me put it to you this way.....if you knew that a car dealer was giving away free sports cars to anyone who walked onto the lot.....first of all, you'd probably run over there to get yours. But after you got yours, wouldn't you call someone? A friend? A relative? A neighbor? Heck some of us would probably go downtown and yell it in the streets. That what the pastor was talking about when he said vigorous peace.

It's like we find peace in Christ but we can't just sit there relaxing on our butts because we found the peace. We find peace in Christ and that peace is so amazing that someone else needs to know about it.

It's still hard for me to put those two words together.....but there you have it. Vigorous Peace.

Quick quote

I'm preparing to speak next week at WCCS fall retreat in Oil City. I"m a bit nervous to be honest. It's a pretty big responsibility to speak 5 times and have all 5 things be somewhat related. Keep me in your prayers. ANYWAY.....as I've been preparing my messages I came across this quote and I wanted to share it ahead of time because it rocks.

"a rebel attempts to change the past; a revolutionary attempts to change the future."


You are revolutionary. We are not out to start a rebellion, we are out to change the future!

Never changing

I'm listening to a cool cd. You may not like it. It doesn't rock hard, it's not rap. It's a worship CD....a really really good one though. It's Tim Hughes who is the guy who wrote Here I am to Worship.....but that was his first cd....i'm listening to his second...

ANYWAY....the song I'm listening to is talking about how God is good to us and he is unchanging. I like that word. Unchanging. That's hard for our puny human brains to wrap around I think.

Here on earth everything is changing....at least a little. Plants die. Trees fall over. Clouds move and change shape. When you fly a kite, one minute you have a breeze the next minute it's gone. People disappoint us because they change their minds. People die. Even rocks wear.

Have you ever seen a rock that's been in a stream for a long time? I'm not talking about the smooth ones....those are a dime a dozen. I'm talking about the ones that are like rippley because the flow of water has to go over them a certain way. That's cool. But they weren't always like that. At one point they were big and round or pointy or something. But over time they wear.

Everything changes. God is unchanging. Before time began He was. When everything is gone, He will still be. Before the beginning of time, He loved me. He loved you. He knew who we would be. His love has wavered for one minute....for one second in all that time. How many time has someone let you down? How many times have you been disappointed by someone? Maybe not even intentionally. I try as best I can to be the best husband that my wife could ever ask for....but the fact of the matter is that I'm just a silly man. I make mistakes and I make her angry or sad or whatever from time to time.

Throughout history we have turned our back on God. And yet when we realize how dumb that is, and we come back to Him, He welcomes us with open arms.

Unchanging. WOW UNCHANGING!

FIRE

"Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn." -John Wesley

What's good for us

My son finally arrived home at the end of last week. My entire world right now is consumed by him.

We have a small problem. Every afternoon he gets tired. He's played all morning long. He's had his lunch. Now he's tired. The problem is that even though he knows he's tired, he doesn't want to lay down to go to sleep. He screams. I'm not talking about just crying, he just wails. When he finally goes to sleep for a couple hours, he wakes up refreshed and ready to tear our house apart until bedtime.

I was thinking about that this afternoon, after we finally got him to sleep.

So many times I've watch students make bad choices. Not because they didn't know better, because they did, they just made bad choices. They chose to be popular in high school rather than follow what God wanted for them.....and then they hit college and realize that they're just average. They choose to dedicate their life to sports, and then their knee blows and not only can't they play sports, they're worried about walking. I've seen students be so engrossed in their relationship with thier boyfriend or girlfriend that they forget that God designed sex for marriage not just to feel good. They choose to cheat on a test thinking that a good grade is that important only to get caught and suspended. They choose steal a candy bar from a convenience store, only to get caught and charged. I've seen a lot.

The weird thing is that all these kids are kids who went to youth group, who went to church, who said they believed in God. They knew what was right. They just didn't want to follow God's plan because it didn't suit them at the time.

God has a plan for our lives. It's perfect. It has to be because he made the plan Himself. Following God's plan for our lives, is often not very easy. At no point in the Bible does God tell us that following Him will be easy. Actually He outright tells us it'll be hard.

In 2 Timothy 3:12 it says "In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted," He then goes on to encourage us to continue living the Godly way. To continue following scripture. So even in the face of knowing it's going to be hard and Paul tells us to continue to be dilligent.

The devil is real and he's pretty darn smart. He continues to dangle beautiful things out in front of us to tempt us away from the good path. No matter what that is for you, I want to encourage you. Though the way may be hard. The climb might be steep. We know God is in control. We know what's good for us. I want to encourage you to be dilligent. Follow the path He's laid out for you. Lay down and take a nap (if you're my son).

Changing a light

I have an office in my basement. Well it was suppose to be my office when we moved into our house three years ago. It's this little room with a rickety old desk and some shelves.

What it really is now is a place to store lots of my stuff. I'm not even sure where all the stuff came from. Over the last couple years it's become a dumping ground of items I'm not sure where else to put. My wife will hand me something and tell me I need to find a place for it because it's cluttering up our living room......so I put it in my office. My home office makes my church office look really clean (and if you've ever been in my church office you'll know what kind of statement that is!)

Well this morning I needed to go find something in my office. It was kind of important that I find this item, so I could repair something that needed done today.

About a month or two ago I had changed one of the two bulbs in my fluorescent light in the office. When I hit the switch today I noticed that the other one was going.....so I should probably replace it.

There are no windows in my basement office. The door doesn't face a light source. So when you turn off the lights, there isn't much to illuminate the room. For some reason I thought it would be wise to try and change the light in my office without a flashlight or any other light source.

I took the cover off, took out the bad bulb and located the good bulb by feeling around. Now if you've ever changed a fluorescent bulb you'll know that on both ends of it, there are two little pins. These pins need to be slid into a little tiny slot in the light fixture. Once those pins are in the slots you have to rotate the bulb up into the fixture where it gets power and sits nicely without falling on your head.

In the dark, putting the pins in the slots was not an easy task. Once I thought I had it set I started rotating it, only to find that I only had one set of pins in the right place......so the other half of the light started falling down. After numerous attempts and lots of should pain from holding this stupid thing up over my head for a good long time, I finally got the bulb in place.

Here's what I was thinking though. We are standing in the midst of a mess. We're just trying to get some light to shed upon the whole thing. Yet we keep trying to do it ourselves. We keep fumbling in the dark, believing that we're smart enough to handle the situation on our own. In this scenerio Jesus would be my flashlight that was 30 ft. away. It would only take a very little effort on my part to fix the entire situation.....but here I am trying to go it alone.

Why do we do that?

In the garden of Eden before sin entered the world God walked with them. He spent time with them. I firmly believe he desires that of us too. He wants to spend time with us....to call us "His Own." And time and time again we say, "you know what God, I'm gonna take care of this thing myself." We all do it on some level.

God my prayer is that you come and illuminate things. Come make the task easier. Come walk with us.

Something different

This blog spot won't have a calendar for my youth group. It won't tell you when we're meeting. This blog will be mostly ramblings and thoughts about God, youth ministry, and life.

Hopefully it'll be updated regularly. Bookmark it, and keep checking back.